A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit
📄 Original study📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Nearly a thousand heart patients in a coronary care unit were secretly split into two groups: one received daily prayers from teams of five Christian volunteers for 28 days, and the other got standard care only. Nobody -- not the patients, not the doctors -- knew who was being prayed for. Using a custom scoring system that tracked 34 different bad outcomes (complications, procedures, etc.), the prayed-for group scored 11% better than the non-prayer group, a statistically significant result. Here's the catch, though: when the researchers tried to measure outcomes using the same scoring system from an earlier landmark prayer study by Byrd, the effect vanished (p = .29). Hospital stays were identical too. So the headline result hinges entirely on a brand-new, unvalidated measurement tool, which makes it hard to call this a clean replication. It ended up in a major Cochrane review of prayer research, sitting awkwardly between suggestive and inconclusive.
Actual Paper Abstract
Context: Intercessory prayer (praying for others) has been a common response to sickness for millennia, but it has received little scientific attention. The positive findings of a previous controlled trial of intercessory prayer have yet to be replicated. Objective: To determine whether remote, intercessory prayer for hospitalized, cardiac patients will reduce overall adverse events and length of stay. Design: Randomized, controlled, double-blind, prospective, parallel-group trial. Setting: Private, university-associated hospital. Patients: Nine hundred ninety consecutive patients who were newly admitted to the coronary care unit (CCU). Intervention: At the time of admission, patients were randomized to receive remote, intercessory prayer (prayer group) or not (usual care group). The first names of patients in the prayer group were given to a team of outside intercessors who prayed for them daily for 4 weeks. Patients were unaware that they were being prayed for, and the intercessors did not know and never met the patients. Main Outcome Measures: The medical course from CCU admission to hospital discharge was summarized in a CCU course score derived from blinded, retrospective chart review. Results: Compared with the usual care group (n = 524), the prayer group (n = 466) had lower mean ± SEM weighted (6.35 ± 0.26 vs 7.13 ± 0.27; P = .04) and unweighted (2.7 ± 0.1 vs 3.0 ± 0.1; P = .04) CCU course scores. Lengths of CCU and hospital stays were not different. Conclusions: Remote, intercessory prayer was associated with lower CCU course scores. This result suggests that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care.
Research Notes
Second major RCT of intercessory prayer for cardiac patients, explicitly designed to replicate Byrd (1988). Central to the distant healing/prayer controversy: the positive MAHI-CCU result is offset by the failure to replicate using Byrd's own scoring system and the use of an unvalidated outcome measure. Included in the Roberts et al. (2011) Cochrane meta-analysis.
Consecutive coronary care unit admissions (N=990) at Mid America Heart Institute were randomized to receive daily remote intercessory prayer from teams of 5 Christian volunteers for 28 days, or usual care alone, under fully double-blind conditions with an IRB waiver of informed consent. Using a newly developed weighted MAHI-CCU composite score of 34 adverse events and procedures, the prayer group scored 11% lower than usual care (6.35 vs 7.13, P=.04). The unweighted event count also favored prayer (2.7 vs 3.0, P=.04). However, the effect did not replicate using Byrd's original categorical hospital course score (P=.29), and no individual outcome component reached significance. Length of CCU and hospital stay did not differ. The authors concluded that intercessory prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care.
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📋 Cite this paper
Harris, William S, Gowda, Manohar, Kolb, Jerry W, Strychacz, Christopher P, Vacek, James L, Jones, Philip G, Forker, Alan, O'Keefe, James H, McCallister, Ben D (1999). A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit. Archives of Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.159.19.2273
@article{harris_1999_prayer,
title = {A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit},
author = {Harris, William S and Gowda, Manohar and Kolb, Jerry W and Strychacz, Christopher P and Vacek, James L and Jones, Philip G and Forker, Alan and O'Keefe, James H and McCallister, Ben D},
year = {1999},
journal = {Archives of Internal Medicine},
doi = {10.1001/archinte.159.19.2273},
}